Tag Archives: burr

House Passes Marijuana Decriminalization – Update for April 4, 2022

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

HOUSE APPROVES MARIJUANA REFORM
Who needs "March Madness" when you have "reefer madness."
Who needs “March Madness” when you have “reefer madness?”

The House of Representatives on Friday passed the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act (H.R. 3617) – sponsored by House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) — by a 220-204 margin. The vote fell largely along party lines with only three Republicans supporting the measure and two Democrats opposing it.

H.R. 3617 decriminalizes marijuana, expunges the records of people convicted of federal cannabis offenses, and requires resentencing in some cases. It provides that any marijuana conviction will be vacated, and existing sentences modified to eliminate marijuana amounts from drug calculations. The only catch is that any sentence including a Guidelines § 3B1.1 aggravating role will be ineligible.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that thousands of current inmates would be released early. In the future, decriminalization also would reduce the number of people in federal prisons and the amount of time they serve. CBO estimates that over the 2022-2031 period, H.R. 3617 would reduce time served by current and future inmates by 37,000 person-years.

CBO’s analysis accounts for time served by offenders convicted of marijuana-only crimes and time served by people convicted of offenses in addition to a pot offense. The analysis says the MORE Act would reduce the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ costs by reducing both the number of prisoners and the amount of time they serve. CBO estimates that the provision would result in net savings of about $800 million over the 2022-2031 period.

marijuana160818Passage of MORE is one of several pieces of legislation that underlines the shift in Congress’s attitude — a change that has come about in part because of the way past drug laws have disproportionately hit minority communities. “This Congress represents a sea change,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

The House passed the EQUAL Act last fall by a margin of 361-66. EQUAL eliminates the federal disparity in prison sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses. A majority of the House GOP overall joined all Democrats in support.

Recently, Sen Richard Burr (North Carolina) became the 10th Senate Republican to back EQUAL, paving the way for likely passage in the upper chamber. House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen Joe Manchin (D-WV), a frequent centrist swing vote, also signed on to the bill in recent days.

“I think they understand we’ve got to take a more innovative path. We need to understand addiction. We can’t just incarcerate our way out of these problems. And we sure can’t continue to turn a blind eye to an egregious injustice, like this crack-powder disparity,” said Holly Harris, president of the Justice Action Network.

The lower price of crack cocaine means that historically it has been more easily accessible to people in marginalized lower-income communities, compared to powder cocaine more prevalent in the suburbs.

marijuana-dc211104A nearly identical version of the MORE Act passed in 2020, but it stalled in the Senate. It passed through the sponsor’s panel again this session in September. Now the action moves to the Senate, where leadership is separately preparing to introduce a legalization bill. It remains unclear whether MORE will receive a Senate vote. The White House has not yet issued a statement on whether President Biden supports the legislation. A group of Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Sen Cory Booker (N.J.) and Sen Ron Wyden (Oregon), is expected to release draft marijuana legislation later this month.

“We’ve been here before,” Nadler said during a press briefing following the vote on Friday. “Unfortunately, the Senate failed to act. Sometimes I think we’d be better off if we didn’t have a Senate.”

Marijuana Moment, House Approves Federal Marijuana Legalization Bill For Second Time In History (April 1, 2022)

Congressional Budget Office, Estimated Changes in Direct Spending and Revenues Under H.R. 3617, the MORE Act (March 28, 2022)

The Hill, House poised to pass bill legalizing marijuana (March 28, 2022)

H.R. 3617, MORE Act

Marijuana Moment, Lawmakers And Organizations React To Federal Marijuana Legalization Bill’s House Passage (April 1, 2022)

Washington Post, House passes bill decriminalizing marijuana; Senate fortunes unclear (April 1, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

EQUAL Act Now Has Path To Passage – Update for March 28, 2022

Leave a comment

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

EQUAL ACT AND MORE ACT MOVING FORWARD IN CONGRESS

It now looks like the EQUAL ACT (S.79), a bill to equalize crack and powder sentences, may have a ready path to passage.

crackpowder160606Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signed onto the bill as a co-sponsor, although his plans to bring the bill to a floor vote are still not clear. The bill passed the House, 361-66, in September and President Joe Biden, who campaigned on criminal justice reform, is expected to sign the measure when it reaches his desk.

Ten Senate Republicans, including Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), who added his name last week, are co-sponsoring the bill, that would eliminate the federal sentencing disparity between drug offenses involving crack and powder cocaine. This paves the way for likely passage in the evenly divided Senate chamber, where 60 votes are required to pass most legislation.

It now “looks like you’d get to 60, really,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), one of the ten GOP EQUAL Act sponsors. “This is the Democrats’ prerogative, it’d be nice if they would bring it to the floor.”

The bill, primarily sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), lowers the punishment for crack cocaine to match the thresholds for powder cocaine. In 2020, the Sentencing Commission found that 77% of crack cocaine trafficking offenders were black and 6% were white. Yet whites are more likely to use cocaine in their lifetime than any other group, according to the 2020 survey. Current law sets an 18-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine, meaning anyone found with 28 grams of crack cocaine would face the same five-year mandatory prison sentence as a person found with 500 grams of powder cocaine.

crack211102Sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine were originally created with a 100-to-1 ratio, but in 2010, Congress reduced the sentencing disparity to 18-to-1 in the Fair Sentencing Act, but advocates have fought to further narrow the sentencing gap.

EQUAL is likely to get a vote in the Senate before the midterms given the support of Schumer and the 10 GOP lawmakers, according to the Washington Times. The GOP support means the legislation is able to overcome a filibuster, provided all 50 Senate Democrats unite behind the effort. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has been a maverick so far in this Session, also became a cosponsor last week.

Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman said in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog that it now seems the EQUAL Act “may have a ready path to passage.”

If enacted, the EQUAL Act would not only level federal sentences for future crack offenses but would retroactively slash prison time for those already doing time. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which has analyzed the impact of the bill, estimates about 7,600 prisoners – nearly 5% of the federal prison population – would receive a sentence reduction. In most cases, overall crack prison sentences would be cut by at least one-third.

Meanwhile, a marijuana reform newsletter last week reported that a bill to federally legalize marijuana may be coming up for another House floor vote next week, The newsletter’s sources said that “nothing is yet set in stone, despite recent calls to bring the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act to the floor again this month.

marijuana160818Nevertheless, rumors of a floor vote – the second time that the MORE Act reached the full chamber after being approved in 2020 – are rife after congressional Democrats held a private session at a party retreat that included a panel centered on the reform legislation. The bill, which would remove cannabis from the list of controlled substances, cleared the House Judiciary Committee last September.

Bloomberg, GOP Support Clears Senate Path for Bill on Cocaine Sentencing (March 23, 2022)

Washington Times, Schumer joins bipartisan push to cut federal prison time for nearly 7,800 crack cocaine traffickers (March 22, 2022)

Sentencing Law and Policy, Is Congress finally on the verge of equalizing crack and powder cocaine sentences? (March 23, 2022)

Marijuana Moment, Federal Marijuana Legalization Bill May Receive House Floor Vote Next Week, Sources Say (March 23, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root